This is the Storm of Spoilers episode for Season 6, Episode 9 "The Battle of the Bastards"

BOOM! That's a ninth episode of Game of Thrones for ya! This episode is split about half-and-half with your three hosts discussing the two battles of the Battle of the Bastards then speculating on what next week's season finale will bring. First, they break down if Sansa's decision to withhold information is at all valid or just emotionally disappointing and talk about what Dany's Winds of Winter plot may be. Then, it's all speculation town as we wonder what's going to happen with the Freys and the Lannisters next week.

To be fair to Rickon, I believe he was the only Stark left who hadn’t tried on the Stupid Stark Mantle at least once – so we shouldn’t begrudge him his opportunity to do so by not weaving as he ran.

And granted, even if he had serpentined (or run in a completely different direction than Ramsey ordered), it’s likely Ramsay would have had all of the archers volley together in order to kill him. But it might have stopped Jon from getting all of the way out there, thus screwing up Ramsay’s plan. So, while I don’t begrudge him for wanting to be a Stupid Stark before he died, that’s what he was for doing precisely what Ramsay wanted.

I was just thinking of Joanna’s wishful, crackpot theory (which I love) that George has secretly completed both books and will release them before S7 of the show airs. But then a more-likely-to-be-true and insidious theory entered my brain instead:

What if some of the criticisms leveled by his most ardent book fans of character behavior this season (some of which may be reflected in The Winds of Winter) has gotten George to start rewriting bits of the sixth novel!! Going backwards instead of forwards!

1) Sept of Baelor (not the entire Kings Landing) goes up in green flame.
-green-charred TOAST– Margaery, Pycelle, Mace, Kevan, Lancel
-death by violence– Loras (goes down fighting, showing how he was the greatest swordsman in the land), Shame Nun, Tommen (Mountainstein crushes head against wall).

2) Cersei, the only surviving royalty of any kind (except for absent Jaime) takes seat on Iron Throne.

3) Littlefinger ALMOST convinces Sansa that his plan for marrying her and uniting Westeros under their leadership is the best plan. But at the last minute, Littlefinger screws up and lets a little too much of his deeper scheming show through, reminding Sansa that he killed Lysa, and was responsible for Jon Arryn’s death (both her family members) and maybe even that he ratted out Ned at the end. Yohn Royce, who Littlefinger threatened a few episodes ago, will be present, or will have been in contact with Sansa, and he’ll likely have some sort of part to play in the Littlefinger drama tonight. Ultimately leading to…

4) Sansa kills Littlefinger in the biggest shock of the night. She finally sheds the last tatters of being controlled by other people (men, especially), and becomes full-on Dark Sansa. She declares herself Queen of the North.

5) Yara and Dany (or just Dany) arrive in Dorne. At first it will seem like she’s there to attack, but she’ll land and be greeted peacefully by Ellaria. We’ll be confused until out steps Varys, and it’ll all make sense where he’s been and what he’s been laying the groundwork for. Yara probably with her. She presents Yara as Queen of the Iron Islands. She presents herself as Queen of Westeros.

6) A brief intercut between two seemingly unconnected stories. Sam in Oldtown and Jorah among the Ruins of Valyria. Sam is looking through some dusty old tomes about Dragonglass and Dragonfire and Dragonsteel and comes across an entry on Dragonscale. Yes, it’s deadly to humans, but it’s even more deadly to the UNdead. OR it’s directly related to what allows the wights to walk. Zombie virus. Jorah will be going through the Ruins, looking for anything like a cure to grayscale. He’ll be full Indiana-Jonesing it. He’ll come across some sort of carving or door or bottle that lines up with whatever Sam is reading (or telling Gillly about after going home for the day). It’s a combined way to defeat the white walkers as well as cure grayscale. Can Sam and Jorah ever join their two discoveries together??

7) Melisandre gets her head chopped off right below the necklace, so that it’s not her young body that slumps to the ground, but her old shriveled body. Everyone is shocked. Davos might not make it out of this confrontation alive. I feel his usefulness to the overall plot has ended and his only remaining duty is to avenge Shireen.

8) Jaime doublecrosses the Freys, beginning Jaime’s true arc of redemption. It’ll be revealed that this is part of the deal he made with Edmure. The Riverlands and the Twins are now under “good guys” control. Jaime might even have made a deal with one of Frey’s good-for-nothing sons that when Walder is gone, one of them can take control. That’s where the “The Lannisters and the Freys send their regards” comes into play. But it’s directed towards Walder.

9) In a short scene, Euron is revealed to be nearly finished building his fleet. He’ll have word that Yara beat him to Mereen and that they are already getting ready to head this way. The most important part of this scene is when Euron shrugs this off as not mattering because he has the ultimate trump card he discovered on his travels abroad– The Dragon Horn, which legend says will allow him to control dragons. Does it work? We’ll find out next season.

10) Arya makes her appearance with the Brotherhood Without Banners. She does something particularly and skillfully violent as part of her reveal. She probably also says “Valar morghulis” which will mean something to the brotherhood and indicate that she’s there to take control. She’s now effectively Joan of Arya. Not a queen, but a leader. The Hound looks like he’s going to kill her, but he instead reveals that he’s got nothing but respect for her and backs her, basically becoming her right hand man for now.

All of this leads into next season, which I’m calling….

11) The War of the Queens. Queens are wild in Westeros! All of them have had ENOUGH of letting men tell them what to do, and now they are going to do things their way. Woe to anyone who stands in the way of ANY of these many queens. The majority of next seasons’ shorter seven-episode schedule will be devoted to this three or four way battle between the various Queens. At the end of next season, they all have to come together to form a truce, doing something that male leaders never would have been able to do. They need to do this because the entirety of season eight’s six episodes will be devoted to

12) The War of Ice and Fire. Humanity vs inhumanity. Living vs the dead. The battle for it all. My only hesitation is that saving it for this final season means that the Fall of the Wall can’t happen until the end of season seven. Right now, my gut feeling for the final shot of THIS season is that the wall will come crumbling down, at least a huge gap, and zombies will come swarming through as the camera creeps in, landing on the face of the Night’s King as he steps through the breech and for the first time, surveys the Promised Land.

Love the show. Question for you guys after episode 10. If the Wall is protected by spells that keep the dead from passing through, then how come the Night’s Watch brought two wights back to Castle Black during Book 1/Season 1? (This was when Ghost found the hand while Jon and Sam were swearing their oaths at the weirwood grove, and one of the wights went on to attack Jeor Mormont.) Shouldn’t the Wall’s magic have stopped that from happening? Or is there some kind of exception if humans willingly bring the wights through? Trying to puzzle this out as I think about the stakes of Bran’s potentially undoing the Wall’s spells by passing South bearing the Night’s King’s mark.